In many ways it wasn’t a vintage display from Liverpool, as they eased to victory over Hull at Anfield on New Year’s Day.

By try telling that to Reds manager Brendan Rodgers, after he was raving about his sides ‘bouncebackability’ following a disappointing festive campaign which saw them lose two on the bounce to Manchester City and Liverpool.

“I said to the players afterwards that I thought that was our best win of the season,” Rodgers said. “In a lot of games we’ve been vibrant with great energy, scored goals and performed well, as well as won. But on the back of the games that we’ve had over this period – and to play with a lot of the same players against a team that won their last Barclays Premier League game 6-0 – we knew we were going to have to tough it out today and dig in.”

Liverpool certainly dug in, and could’ve won more comfortably had they finished off the numerous chances they created. Raheem Sterling, Jordan Henderson and Philippe Coutinho amongst others were guilty of missing gilt-edge chances, as the Reds could’ve run away with it. As it was their seventh-straight win at Anfield was pleasing for many different reasons, as Rodgers hailed a complete team performance, despite another Luis Suarez‘s masterclass.

“We might not have always been at our best, but we got two great goals, had other opportunities and actually restricted Hull to no shots on target,” Rodgers said. “Luis Suarez’s quality is unquestionable. It’s probably unfair that our team doesn’t get the credit. Everyone talks about Luis, and we all know he’s a world class player, but even when he was out of the team we only lost one game. Today was a great team performance and what we’re building here is based around that. I’m very, very pleased with today because it was a great victory for us.”